Partners:

Problem:

Indigenous vegetables (IVs) have a strategic food security role, offering significant opportunities for the poor, particularly women, through farming, processing and trading activities.  Until recently, these commodities were viewed as minor crops of little economic importance, and therefore had not been a focus for research in Africa.  Little is known of their productive potential, economic value and contribution to household nutrition and livelihoods, and in relation to extracted products for nutritional and medicinal use.  In addition, IVs are a resource that is being subject to habitat and genetic erosion, with loss of local knowledge.

Achievements:

Diagnostic studies on the opportunities and constraints to commercialisation in Uganda and Cameroon determined that:

• IVs offered a significant opportunity for the poorest people, particularly women, to earn a living, as producers, processors and traders, without requiring large capital investments;
• prices are relatively affordable compared with other food items;
• IVs provide an important source of employment for those outside the formal sector;
• revenue is dependent on improvements to germplasm, agronomic practices, pest and disease control and market and post-harvest management.

Methodology:  participatory varietal selection to produce new varieties involving farmers, traders, scientists and dissemination organisations in planning and execution, particularly by farmers and traders to validate the research through identifying crop desirable characteristics and in varietal selection for both on-station and on-farm trials.

Technology:

• development of on-farm varietal line purification systems to enhance farmers’ germplasm and productivity;
• garden egg plant varieties with improved characteristics and yield;
• improved nursery practices increase yields for Corchorus (nine-fold) and Cleome (two-fold);
• modified harvesting practices increase yield of leafy vegetables threefold and their seed yield (seven-fold);
• improved seed of Cleome, Corchorus, Brassicas, Okra, Garden Egg and Cowpea.